I don’t believe in ghosts, not really. When my mum first got sick, we used to joke that if the worst were to happen she would come back to haunt me, to keep me company and make sure I was handing my essays in on time. That she’d throw my stuff around the room, just to be annoying, just because she could. That was her sense of humour and her self-deprecation all at once, she thought that were she given the chance to communicate with me from beyond the grave, something nobody has ever done (oh, we used to laugh at the ghost hunter shows and grouch at the spiritualists flogging their wares at the local community centre) - honestly a part of her thought that that would irritate me. I shook my head at the thought of it, because how could such a miracle ever become irritating?

 

When she got worse we stopped joking and her humour gave way to fear and a need, desperate and vital, to tell me everything she thought she had a lifetime to teach me. About how she’d known from the first second she’d seen my father that he was trouble, and that she was more than willing to bear it. How she’d held me when I’d just been born and thought I was a little ugly, a squashed up pseudo human with lungs that seemed to be endlessly full. She told me how she’d always known, really, about me, and how when I’d told her it hadn’t been a surprise. How she’d steeled herself for it and done all her crying long before I’d accepted it myself.

 

I found myself spending more time at the hospital, not going to class, not handing in essays. Our conversations started to repeat and her eyes lost a little of their focus. She was, and I know it’s cliché to say, smaller, both physically and within herself. Her hands were still her hands but it felt like I was already touching the death lingering in the room.

 

When it happened, when she stopped recognising me, it was all at once, not in stages. She’d call out for Sandra, for her daughter, crying for a nurse to get this strange man away from her.

 

Everyone at the hospital was very understanding. But - I think - sometimes they’d look at me and wonder why I wasn’t Sandra. Why I couldn’t be, for my dying mother.

 

My old room was the same as ever, if a little dusty. Sandra’s clothes were still in the wardrobe, pushed to the back. I hadn’t taken them to uni with me, obviously. Sandra’s makeup was still in the bottom drawer of the cabinet, a little crusty and flaky but usable.

 

I stepped out of my jeans, out of my boxers, pulled my sweatshirt and t-shirt over my head, unclipped my binder, and slipped on knickers, strapped on a bra, let the flow of a summer dress cascade over curves testosterone was yet to fully eat away at, drew the red of the lipstick over my mouth, the mascara over my lashes, fluffed up the short tufts of my hair.

 

In the mirror, stood a ghost. In the mirror, stood Sandra. And I hated her.

 

I wiped the lipstick off with the back of my hand, the scarlet smear a lie on my skin.

 

I went to the bathroom and threw up neatly. Then I took off the makeup, took off the clothes, and redressed myself as the man I’d been for the last three years, the son my mum had forgotten, the son I was and couldn’t help but be.

 

I wish I could say there was a moment when she recognised me again. That she’d said my name, my real name, one last time. That she’d stopped wondering where Sandra was.

 

A part of me wonders if I should have been more selfless. If I should have dressed up and pretended I was still her little girl.

 

But my mum, brilliant and brave and funny and self-deprecating and only afraid when things got really bad, and even then brave enough to try to teach through the fear, my mum she wouldn’t have wanted me to lie to her. My dad had done that for the best part of a decade, and I’d lied to myself enough about myself that it was a wonder my tongue wasn’t black as soot.

 

My mum died and I was a stranger to her. But the way her hand was limp in mine, her hair lank and her face so hollowed out, it felt like she was a stranger to me too. We’d never said goodbye officially, the last ‘I love you’ probably hadn’t felt like the last one at the time, but there we were. Two strangers in a hospital room, holding hands. Waiting. And then, without any great announcement or declaration, she was gone, and it was just me and a body, the hand in mine already cooling.

 

So I don’t believe in ghosts, not really. Not the type that go boo or throw things around rooms or speak through Ouija boards. But I think there were ghosts in that hospital room, one a name and an identity put to rest, the other a woman, my mother, in her truest form. Sandra died three years ago so that I could live. My mum died when her memory made her only child into a stranger. She died twice, as will I. Not everyone does that.

 

Mum? My essays are all done and I’ve been going to class. I’m sitting here staring at my bookshelf. If you’re there, knock something on the floor. I’ll be waiting. Please, be annoying. I miss you. But I understand too.

 

I thought at first that if you died it would mean I wouldn’t have a mother anymore. But that’s not how it works. I’ll always be your son. The way I always have been. Maybe that’s what a ghost really is - an echo. Memories. Nothing supernatural after all. Just one person keeping another person alive even after they’ve died. So maybe I do believe in ghosts a bit. I’ll still wait the rest of my life for her to prove it to me though. She would be stubborn enough.

 

‘Til then, I carry on. It’s what we do, as a people, the ripples around us of communities and individuals flowing like water, memories and ghosts passing through. And every day I become more like the person I should be.

 

Dammit, it hurts. So much sometimes it’s hard to bear. But that means it was real. That she was real. People tell me it’ll fade, and maybe it will, but Mum? If you’re out there, you have my permission to annoy me. I miss you.

 

Love, Toby.